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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Santiago, Algarrobo, Isla Negra and Valparaíso

After sleep and sleep, I suppose for the jet lag and the high temperature of Santiago, we have lunch at Susana’s place and we watch “Inception”. Lazy day!

Next day I arrange to meet with Luís (brother of a really good friend in Tarragona, Germán). He pick me up and we went to the centre of Santiago to walk thru the typical galleries, watch (from outside) some of the cafés con piernas, where the waitress are only very little dressed.

We walk around the Centro Cultural del Palacio de la Moneda and we visit the Museo Precolombino where there is a really good collection of all the different cultures before the arrive of the Europeans.
Luís have a lot of knowledge of Santiago and Chile, perfect!

At the afternoon I go with Susana at the inauguration of the Museo Arte de Luz at Parque Forestal. We are going to a Couchsurfing meeting, but is packed of people and at the end Jorge offers a plan B, watch the performance from a terrace just in front of where we are.
Great views. The performance not so spectacular… we have dinner with collages of work of Jorge that they invite us to go up at the terrace.

I meet with Luís, this time to go to the coast. At Algarrobo he have a summer house where at summer (now) they live with the family, Nancy his wife and their two children, Luisa and Gabriel.
After lunch, I go with Luisa and Gabriel to Isla Negra to see one of the houses of Pablo Neruda, the favorite one for him, and were after the democracy back to Chile, were moved the gravy of him.
We go back at Algarrobo and we walk along the beaches full of people.

I go to Valparaíso the next day by bus. This city is more bohemian than Santiago. There is a lot of small hills with old elevators to help to move around. The market, the trole bus, the neighborhoods of Concepción and the views from the other of the houses of Pablo Neruda the best.

We have dinner at Algarrobo house and we went to drink a Pisco Sour at the beach.

Next morning Nancy give us a ride to the Yuco coast to do a little walk along this part of the coast more untouched. Beautifull! We also sea marine lions!

I go back to Santiago, I go back to Susana’s place. I want to go for a walk that has been arranged via Couchsurfing at the Alto del Naranjo at Cerro de Povidencia.

We are 8 persons, 2 cars and a lot of water. The temperature in Santiago is no going down.
The organizer said that it was a easy walk, but … medium it would be more cured. Go up and go up… to then go down.
Susana and another girl turn around at the beginning of start. They were luky and they found transport to go back to Santiago.
The views from the Alto del Naranjo are great. Santiago for one side and the Andes for the other.

When I go back to Susana’s place, I do a session to recover energy. We watch the movie from Chile, Los Debutantes.

On Sunday I meet Luís again to visit more Sanitago. Neighborhoods, museums, restaurants and his house.
We start with the Museo de la Soladiridad that starts when Salvador Allende was the president of Chile and thanks to a manifest to all the artist from the world to help Chile.
We visit Barrio Brasil, a worker neighborhoods where in some parts they start to transform the warehouses in lofts, and were we walk streets and squares.
The next stop we do is the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and lunch at one nice Asian restaurant!
At Luís place he give me some history of the music from Chile with a really good examples, and we watch a tv show that mix music and art.

I am decided to buy a light tent and some gadgets to camping in the south of Chile. Luís show me where I can find all I’m looking for…
By car we visit some of the neighborhoods that we haven’t visit and we get away to the road that goes to the sky resorts till the sixth curve. Luís does a barbeque for lunch with wine from Chile, Carménère variety.

At afternoon I go back at Susana’s place. I have to organize the backpack and prepare a Package to send to Tarragona. We watch another film from Chile, 199 recetas para ser feliz, that is filmed in Barcelona and some parts of the movie are in Catalan without subtitles! Susana doesn’t get anything.

We go out for dinner with Jorge, tapes from Chile… great!
With the package, I decide to leave at Santiago at Luís place. In my route I will go back to Santiago after Buenos Aires and Mendoza, and then I’ll send the package.

The last day around Santiago I visit Barrio Lastarria and the Mercado Central. We stop at Piojos bar to try the drink Terremoto (earthquake) and Maremoto (Seaquake).